001All right, it is 7:00 and uh the regular meeting of the West Valley School Board of Directors is now called to order. Please stand for the pledge. Flags in the way. >> Ready, begin. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> I'm just going to make a motion to excuse James Keepart. He called in and said he's very sick. So I'll make that motion. All in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. Same sign. passes four to zero. Dr. Finch, communications, I don't think there's anything, >> right? That was just a placeholder for the response. >> Okay, Michelle, you are up. Yay. Excited to be here. >> Well, thank you. I'm excited to
002have you here. So, um, good evening. I'm Michelle Saguenza, the principal of this fabulous school. Um, and I'm just going to start my presentation. Um, so next slide. Thank you. So, I'm going to talk about our school improvement plan. Um, goal one for our student improvement plan is the culture of safety and belonging. And every fall the whole school district takes a survey from the center for educational effectiveness and this is measuring how safe kids feel and um their and how they feel belonging. So, it's given to parents if they want to take it to staff also if they want to take it. Um, and hopefully most kids take it. But, um, for question one, I feel safe at school. Our projected um, target was to have 75% of our students say they feel um,
003safe. They feel safe at school and 91% of our students feel safe. Um, most students are respectful of others at this school. Our projected um target was 35. Not sure why why we aimed so low, but anyway, we look really good because we had 69% of our students feel that they um they're respectful of others at this school. We we do give this to our students in grades three through um fifth. So, um, it's the upper grades that take this. In November, 91% of our students attended school 90% of the time. Does that make sense? 90% or more the time. Next slide. So, we also do a formative assessment. It's a Google sheet that has two questions on it. And again, we are looking at safety and belonging. And the two questions we asked are,
004I feel safe at school. And 96 of our students last month said they feel safe at school. And the other question we asked is most of our most most students are respectful of others at our school and 90% said that they uh feel respected school. Um then we had 92% of our students were attending school 90% or more. So sometimes I'm asked um why why kids don't feel safe. So we do have a spot where kids can write about why they don't feel safe. Um and we have lots of random answers. Um so here are some of the answers that kids put. I just took a little snippet of it. 22 of the kids responded. Um, so we had my home is safer because I'm with my family. Um, they need more security guards. I'm
005not sure about that one. I don't know. I just don't like it in general. I do want to become smarter. I just don't want to go here for 364 days for seven hours each day. Just feels absurd. So yeah, but I'm happy he comes or he comes. Uh they're they're big kids and they are mean sometimes. I feel safe at school because we have great staff and nobody bullies me. Um I don't know. I just don't and I don't like it in general not to be mean though any and I do feel safe. Um so it's kind of just all over the place. I just get like random answers. This is used more for me to look at and see if there is a pattern. You know, our kids saying, "I get bullied at recess
006or um I'm afraid to go in the bathroom." I mean, if that keeps repeating, then there's a big problem. But most of the time it's silly little stuff. Yeah. Um so so the next slide here is um this is a snip from the Washington school improvement framework. It shows the growth Cottonwood made in attendance um in attendance rates from the 2024 to the 2025 school year. You can see that Cottonwood improved two decimal uh decimal points in the overall category and these two subcategories which were Hispanic and um lowinccome. Um so this here is like evidence that our safety and belonging strategies are working and students are coming to school consistently over the previous years. So this of course is leading to better um academic outcomes. Um, so I do want to add that there's
007still those outliers. There's still those kiddos who for whatever reason are chronically absent. Um, whether that means they get to school late or they're picked up early or they just don't come to school at all. But it's a it's a small proportion as we're slowly moving. But when those kiddos are there, we love them where they are. um cuz if they're little, it's not their fault that their grownup can't get them to school or you know, we also have kids who leave because they're phenomenal athletes at a young age. Parents pulling for gymnastics, pulling for soccer, but they're the parent. So, um we just keep working on that. So, you might be asking, what is improving our attendance? Um, so I think that it's the way our staff teaches students. So we have a lot
008of active engagement using hands-on rather than passive learning. You know, no more of the sit and get. Kids are really um actively engaged, using their hands. We have a lot of teachers doing stuff back at the carpet. We're not sitting in our desk for what was it 364 days, seven hours. We are up and we're moving. They're getting that brain going. Um, so I just feel like our teachers are meeting students academically where they are. And that goes that happens because I have an amazing instructional coach, Jen Ditter. She might be in the audience. And I have a phenomenal resource teacher, Abby Ferguson. And the two of them, I couldn't do my job without him. They like look at data. They are able to go back and tell teachers where these kids are struggling, where
009they're doing great, and we just meet the needs of all of our kids. We have kids who struggle academically, but we also have kids that are performing eighth grade. And so we need to meet them where they are because can't do the math then you're going to check out. So you got to have the math that's at your level. If you're bored out of your mind, you're thinking about what you're going to write on the bathroom wall. I'm just kidding. We have an issue with that right now. So we want to like engage them all the time. So um with that we have teachers who are doing the badge book. We have um teachers who are using proficiency scales. This is helping kids see where where they need to be on a 4 321 scale.
010Every teacher has a learning target of this helps teacher teachers and kids know what they're learning. We have the success criteria that is helping um kids understand why the learning is important. Um so, oh one other thing I want to add is our millionaires club. Something else we do here is accelerated reader. So, um, accelerated reader, if you're not, kids read a book and then they get on the accelerated reader program and they take a quiz on the book that they read. If they pass with 80% or higher, then the program calculates how many words they read and the more books they read and they pass, the more words that they get. And the goal is to get into the millionaires club. So, as you see there, we have already have at this point, I
011think that's 13 13 U millionaires. We have two that have read two million words. We have one that's read three million words. And we have a kiddo who's read four million words. So, just yeah, keeping reading fun. Okay. So, the next one is the social emotional piece. So putting our students emotional needs first is important because without feeling safe and understood, no instructional strategies will be effective. And I believe with like all my heart if we do not know our kids, if we do not meet them where they are, if they don't feel understood, doesn't matter what we do as we can stand on our hands, >> they're not going to learn because they need to feel like they belong. So we do things um we do a monthly awards assembly that students get recognized
012for their perfect attendance for that month. Um also at the these assemblies we recognize the bus driver the bus riders of the week. Shout out to transportation who provides that to us. Nice way for those kids to be recognized. We have our 2020 readers. We um recognized our millionaires. We also have some perfect pause citizens. So, citizenships. So, teachers have different awards that kids stand up and get recognized for. And we do that once a month. And then on Fridays, um our student leaders with the guidance from um Mrs. McMurray, one of our fourth grade teachers, they do announcements. They do shoutouts to staff and to students. Um Mrs. Bailey pulls the names of kids who have had perfect attendance. Then they get to play bingo blingo blinko like on what is that show? Price
013is right. >> Right. Prices, right? Um so we have that little machine and then those kids get a little token thing and they get an award or a prize. Um so that's always fun. We also have teachers who do individual PBIS pause experience is in their room. Um, one of our favorites is extra recess. We have teachers like teacher up there in the corner. She um is having her kids duct tape her. Um, we recently had somebody um toilet paper in my office. So, each classroom has their own rewards. It's kind of like good behavior. you get a marble in the jar um where you color in so many paws and then the the class gets a reward. Um and then we also have something called our schoolwide pause experience and every few months kids
014get to buy this experience. The experiences range anywhere from making friendship bracelets to trading Pokemon cards which is always a hit. Um there's art, there's singing, there's lots of different activities um that they get to participate in. Um and lastly, we have an amazing um PTSA here and our PTSA is always throwing little activities after school like um skate land there. I want you to know I skated the last time I went. It'll be the last time I skated, but those kids got a treat and um so did the parents. Then um we also do teacher night. So just opportunity for families to come and see the staff outside of the the school walls. Okay. So next thing I want to talk about is a bright spots and it is from the 74. And if
015you're not aware of the 74, it is a nonprofit news organization covering America's educational system from early childhood through college and career. Um and so in their um articles they they have different articles and so one the articles are the the bright spots. Um so the bright spot series highlight highlights those places where third grade literacy scores are much higher than expected based on the school's poverty rates. So um next slide. So I'm going to talk about that. So this is only third grade. Third grade in the whole nation. Okay. Next slide. So this is all of the elementary schools in Washington state that have a third grade in them. So, um, but before I go on anymore, I just want to give a shout out to all the third all the elementary schools in
016West Valley because every elementary school is above the um regression line. So, it's quite an honor that we're doing so well, but it is about Cottonwood. Um, oh, not yet. So, um, a T. So uh a tan valley and cottonwood are two schools with the highest scores for reading in Washington when compar compared to schools that have the same free reduced meal rates. So a tanm valley that you can see right there talent a tan valley's um uh expected should have been I think it's 37 37 and they are at 70%. So that is That's really impressive. Um, and Cottonwood, that's us up there. Cottonwood's expected rate should have been 56. >> Mhm. >> And we were at 81%. So, um, that is it's amazing. Um, but it couldn't be done without our kindergarten teachers,
017our first grade teachers, our second grade teachers, and our third grade teachers who continue that great um instruction to get us where we are. So, that concludes my presentation. Any questions? >> I I have a I guess a comment. Thank you. That was all awesome. So, I I downloaded some stuff on the 74. I was just interested in read the article you you put on there. So really exciting. So what what would what would be some of the wise? I know it's our instructional staff. I I get that we have good staff and good leaders and they move them through. What are some of the reasons you think that we've done so well be besides instructional staff? Are there things that they've done that you can pick out that have brought us to that higher
018level? Maybe you could take us through the from prek to third grade and some of those effective strategies that you see in the classrooms. >> So starting in kindergarten even prek, right? >> Pre-k. >> So we have prek in this building, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Sure. >> So we have preschool in our building so kids stay with us for a long time. I think that's one thing. They feel safe. Um we have transitional kindergarten here. Um, it is very structured play, >> but she's also throws in all kinds of academics as far as like singing songs, following directions, all kinds of stuff like that. Then when we get to kindergarten, we have our badge books. Um, and those badge books again are designed to meet the kids where they are. So they get
019to work on those skills that they need and they the teachers make a big deal like when they met certain badges and that follows through all the way to second grade. So I think that that's part of it. I'll go back to like our instructional coach >> gathering all the data. We have really strong PLC teams here, professional learning um communities. So when we meet at grade levels, we look at data. we diagnose, you know, what is what worked really well for this teacher? Why are their scores high on this assessment? Why aren't they as high for this other teacher? What are they doing? So, we just have a lot of um communication. Uh I think I really do think the learning target, the teacher clarity that we do here, um teachers are socializing their
020learning targets in the classroom. It's just not a something posted on the wall. they're talking about their learning targets um and why it's important. >> We say also um you hear a lot about the science of reading and it's really a balanced approach to reading instruction. So we do have phonics instruction. We have phone name segmentation. You see that a lot. We saw it today when we were in classrooms. We had uh all the administrators here at Cottonwood observing classrooms and seeing best practices in action. >> A great day. I think you could also talk maybe a little bit about our multi-tiered assistance of support that we have here at Cottonwood. >> So we have our tier one kids who are, you know, just get the general program here works. Are you talking about like
021for behavior? >> Well, for both. Yeah. Both behavior and academics. And that's what it's all about rather than multi-tered systems of support and having this integrated. >> Yeah. And so we so we have our tier one kids who are getting everything they need and they're doing great. Then we have those little kids are kind of on the bubble um who may need intervention and reading. They might need some intervention as far as learning to play school correctly. We have an amazing behavior um specialist here that develops plans for the kids, works with the kids. Our counselor also has her uh her office is set up like a sensory room. So those kids who need to come in and just kind of have a break. Um and then we have our tier three where um we
022have a resource teacher who's actively involved making sure that those kiddos are getting exactly what they need. Um and also again the instruction is where the kids need to be. We have our um lap program that pulls kids out if they need um some direct instruction. We also push in. So, I guess what I'd say is like we're not like our services here aren't just a place like we're meeting all the kids where they need to be. Services fit the >> Well, thank you. It's it's impressive. I think I've mentioned before, I think at a board meeting that um when I was at the WASA conference or somebody I know from the west side and he was calling over here going, "What are you guys doing?" Because he was seeing our scores and and it
023was so so we're uh we're known. >> So, thank you. >> Others comments, questions. >> I would just say thank you to all of you that are here from Tot. I mean, seems amazing. You can tell just walking in the building that um there's a lot of fun and a lot of the things that you focus on are really positive reinforcement which I think makes a big difference for the kids um to not you know to feel like they're rewarded for good behavior and good achievement and not just focusing on the negative which happens sometimes. So I think that's probably it seems like it's a fun place and you've got 91% >> coming. >> So it's really obvious that you guys are doing a great job. Thank you all and I'm looking over there because
024Well, again, I appreciate Michelle you um sharing the information from the 74 website because a lot of times in our district, especially, oh, well, Cottonwood that has higher demographics and then that might be considered why they're getting these high scores, but this shows that, you know, Otown Valley is getting the highest in the state for that um level of free and reduced meal rate. and Cottonwood. This is the highest in the state of Washington right here for schools that have 40% free free and reduced meal rate. So >> poverty level is the highest is what you're saying, >> right? Well, yeah, it's based on schools that have the similar poverty level. >> So these scores from our third grade here at Cottonwood, 81% meaning standard. That's the highest in the state of Washington for schools
025that have 40% free and reduced memory. >> So it's great great to see. You're kind of comparing apples to apples at that point >> and it's great to see the high achievement. >> Do you have a question? >> Yes. Or I don't have a question. I just have a comment. Um I went to Cottonwood and I grew up here and I actually struggled with reading quite a bit and I can just fullheartedly say that every single one of my teachers, some of them are even in the room with me right now. They poured their hearts into me so much and I truly wouldn't be where I am right now like being able to test so well. Sorry, not to toot my own horn, but being a good student now, I wouldn't be able to do
026that without all the staff members. So, this is truly a great school. I always had so much fun here. So, thank you for keeping it that way. >> Thank you. >> And then this is Georgia Bonds, our junior uh representative to the school board, and she'll be soon a senior for us. So, >> thank you, Georgia. >> Yeah. I've just I'm sorry, I have no voice. I've just heard in the community such good things about Cottonwood and it's cool to see like the the academics and the belongingness and sort of the goals of the school matching up. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Okay. Uh it's a public time. There are no signups, but is there anybody like to make a public comment even though you didn't
027sign up? Okay, moving along. We have a couple action items to approve tonight. One is the approval of minutes. I'll uh make a motion to approve the minutes. All in favor say I. >> I. Opposed by the same sign. A motion approved. Okay, we have uh four travel requests and um I'm just going to mention them all and then we can decide if we want to pull them apart for any reason if you have any questions or we can just vote on them all at once. So we have um four people going to the ABAI annual convention which is the association for behavior analysis international and we have six students and two chaperons going to the high school knowledge bowl for the state championship in Wachi. So that's very cool. And then we have uh
028Elevate Conference. Uh it's a premier professional development for preK through 2 grade educators and that's in uh July. And then a German immersion camp incarnation in March. So those are the four. Does anybody want to pull any of those out for a question or do you have a question on any of those? >> Okay. I will entertain a motion to approve all four travel requests. You would like to make that motion. I'll make a motion to approve all four travel requests. >> Hey, Joel has made a motion to approve. All in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Opposed by the same sign. Uh the approval of those four travel requests is passed four to zero. Are there any items arising issues that may have come up since receiving the agenda? Okay. Superintendent report. Yeah,
029I'd just like to report that on February 25th, I was able to take some students and along with the parent chaperon and we went to Olympia and we met with quite a few uh representatives and senators. I really appreciate Stephanie Smith setting up our agenda. It really went well. Uh usually when we uh go it, it's pretty special if we're able to get on to either the House or the Senate floor. Sometimes um it just works out that we're able to do that. Well, this is the first time ever that we had students able to go on both the House and the Senate floor. So, Senator Curtis King took the students out on the floor and got photos there. And then later in the day, all the representatives that are listed here, they were all
030together and they were able to have a nice group photo out on the floor and students got to sit in Representative Deb Manur's seat and it was just really exciting. Uh we had a great time talking to uh the representatives and senators and sharing information about college and the high school and the benefits of that and then sharing about our innovation center and so there was just a lot of a lot of positives there. We also shared some of the concerns we have with some unfunded mandates. So it was it was good to share that as well. But altogether we met with Representative Jeremy Dufo, Representative Chris Corey, Senator Curtis King, Representative Demanures, Representative Lorie Mendoza, and then the office staff for Senator Nikki Torres and Representative Tom Dent. So, it was really a great
031day and I appreciate our parent Chaperon Rolando Silvatel who came along with us and the students were Katie Champy who's our senior who's the representative of the board. Unfortunately, Georgia was ill that day. I know that the cold's been going around. I got it myself recently. Uh Kenneth Loveless uh grade 10 from innovation center who's in the U STEM aviation aerospace pathway. And then Stephanie Silva grade nine from the innovation center. She's in the health science pathway. So we had a nice variety of students and their experience in sharing that with our legislators. So there's another really good trip that we had this year. There we go. That's my report. >> Okay. Hey, are there any uh board reports or anything the board would like to report on? >> Dr. Are you going to talk
032about the ESD 105? >> Well, that here. >> Yeah, that's part of >> right part of what we shared was the unfunded mandates and then so how important it is that we have the local effort assistance funds. So that's there's property rich districts, they get regionalization, they get up to 18% in addition to what we get for staffing. So that's property rich districts get enhancements. And then the property poor districts like most of the school districts in Eastern Washington, they have some assistance with local effort assistance. So there's it's not they used to call it levy equalization, but it doesn't equal. So, it's really not equalization, but it's some some local effort assistance for school districts like uh West Valley. And then to balance the budget, they are talking about reducing the local effort assistance.
033So, they're reducing funds for the property poor districts, but really not talking anything about the the more property rich districts. So, we were sharing just the how important it is to have that LEA funds, the local effort assistance. And then because uh there are unfunded mandates and I had shared this in the board packets public this is just some information that the ESD 105 had pulled together about all the school districts in our region. So West Valley is listed there were part of that that in total if you look at subcost cert certificated and classified staff in the the state provided the funding for about 1.5 million. is actually 25.8 million is the actual cost. So we have to fund the salaries and the sub costs. And how do we do that? We do that
034by tapping into like these local effort assistant funds that are some additional assistance to to basically fund what the state doesn't fund. So that's why we're just sharing how important that local effort assistance is. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> Anything else from the board? Okay, we're now going into executive session on the performance of a public employee. Uh, estimate about 25 minutes for that. >> Okay. >> And no, no action. >> And no action will be taken. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. >> All right. Thank you. and meeting. >> Okay, I'm closing the executive session at 7:55 with no action taken and this meeting is now adjourned. Very good.